TOP 5 American Book Recommendations

  Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com. Do you want some great book recommendations? Let's talk about it. Movies and TV shows are a great way to learnabout the English language and about American culture, but there is another way, anotherkind of material that is great for learning about this as well. Books, my love, but I know that not everyoneloves to read as much as I do, so today I have narrowed down, this means I have chosenfive books that will help you to learn more about American culture, American history,some ideas that are essential to the American spirit, and I hope that these five book recommendationswill help you to expand your knowledge of English as well. I added a link in the description to Amazon.comfor all of these books so that you can check them out. All right, let's start with book number one. The first three books are usually read byeight, nine and 10 year olds. So the language is a little bit simpler. The vocabulary is a little bit simpler, butthe story is still complex and interesting enough to hold the attention of adults, soif you feel a little bit uncomfortable about reading books in English or maybe you've neverread a book in English before, these are a great place to start. The first book is Little House on the Prairieby Laura Ingalls Wilder. As you can see on the cover of this book takesplace quite a while ago, in the 1880s, 1890s, and it's based on the true story of the author'slife. When her family moved from the north of theUS to Minnesota to Kansas and this kind of experience moving into Indian territory, startinga new town, and trying to make it through the hardships and the struggles of early Americansettlers. I feel like this book really shows that originalAmerican spirit of trying to find a home, find someplace to live and having hope despitedifficulties. So I'd like to read a couple sentences fromthis book so that you can kind of see the language and see if it's a good fit for you. Chapter one, going west. A long time ago, when all the grandfathersand grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies or perhapsnot even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and baby Kerry left their little house inthe big woods of Wisconsin. They drove away and left it lonely and emptyin the clearing among the big trees and they never saw that little house again. They were going to Indian country. Pa said there were too many people in thebig woods, now. Quite often Laura heard the ringing thud ofan ax, which was not Pa's ax, or the echo of a shot that did not come from his gun. The path that went by the little house hadbecome a road. Almost every day, Laura and Mary stopped theirplane and stared at surprise at a wagon slowly creaking by on that road. Oh, so here we can be introduced to some newwords like creaking or the path. Instead of a road, you can compare these vocabularywords. I hope that you could understand a littlebit of this story. This book is one of the most simple that we'regoing to talk about today and it's a good starting place. Let's go on to book 1.5. It's not quite my second book, but it's similarto this one, so if you are interested in this style of book, you'll be interested in thenext one. My next recommendation, recommendation 1.5is Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Ross. This book is also well known. The story is well loved by a lot of Americansand if you have ever had a dog or even a pet, but for a dog, you know that bond betweendog and owner, owner and dog, that is a strong friendship, a strong love and that's whatthis book is essentially about. It's about a boy and two dogs, but these dogsare coon dogs, which means that they hunt raccoons. This book is a lovely story about growingup and love and friendship, but I have to warn you, this book is really sad. In fact, in fourth grade, after lunch, myteacher used to read us one chapter every day and after lunch all of the students wouldsit at their desks and listen, but at the end of this book, she couldn't continue. She couldn't read it out loud to us becauseshe was crying too much, so she asked a student in my class to finish reading the last chapterso you can imagine that you get involved with the characters, you get involved with thestory and you really care about it. So I warned you. Let's read a couple sentences from this book. Chapter one. When I left my office, that beautiful springday, I had no idea what was in store for me. To begin with, everything was too perfectfor anything unusual to happen. It was one of those days when a man feelsgood, feels like speaking to his neighbor, is glad to live in a country like ours andproud of his government. You know what I mean. One of those rare days when everything isright and nothing is wrong. I was walking along saline when I heard adog fight. At first I paid no attention to it, afterall, it wasn't anything to get excited about just another dog fight in a residential section. As the sound of the fight grew nearer, I couldtell there were quite a few dogs mixed up in it. They boiled out of an alley turned and headedstraight towards me. Not wanting to get bitten or run over, I movedover to the edge of the sidewalk. So in this section already in the first coupleparagraphs, you've seen new words such as in store for me, what is in store for me,great expression or the word rare or whistling or to get excited about something. These are great words that are not too challenging. Maybe you've heard them before, but it's goingto help remind you of words that you already know and help to build your vocabulary. Book number two, because the last one was1.5, is Wonder by RJ Palacio, this book is newer than the other two and that makes itfeel more relatable because it's more modern and it's quickly becoming a new American classic. I think that this book is required readingin some fourth and fifth grade classrooms in the US and it follows a boy August or Augieas he goes to fifth grade for the first time in his life. You see, he has been homeschooled for hiswhole life because he has a facial deformity that looks like his face is melting off. This is an unusual situation, so it talksabout him trying to find friends and acclimate to a new situation and other people tryingto accept him. This book doesn't just focus on Augie's perspective. Some of the chapters are written by othercharacters in the book so that you can see it through their eyes. You might see a chapter written by his sister,his sister's boyfriend, his best friend, some classmates of his, so you can see the storyfrom different perspectives and realize that each person in the story is struggling withsomething. Each person in the story maybe they look liketheir life is great, but really they're struggling with something and need love and care andfriendship like everyone else. Let's read a couple sentences from this book. Chapter one, ordinary. I know I'm not an ordinary 10 year old kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things. I eat ice cream, I ride my bike, I play ball. I have an Xbox, stuff that makes me ordinary,I guess, and I feel ordinary inside, but I know ordinary kids don't make other ordinarykids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don't get stared at whereverthey go. If I found a magic lamp and I could have onewish, I would wish that I had a normal face that no one ever noticed at all. I would wish that I could walk down the streetwithout people seeing me and then doing that look away thing. Here's what I think. The only reason I'm not ordinary is that noone else sees me that way. We see this from a modern 10 year olds perspective. It's a beautiful story and I recommend it. The next books are all written for adults,so the language is a little bit higher. Maybe the sentence structure is a little morecomplex, but I chose these ones because I think that you will like them and they'renot scholarly journals, so I hope that you'll be able to understand them with some practice. The next book is The Help by Katherine Stockett. This is not the usual cover of this book. It's right here, but this book, can you imagineliving in the US in the south, in the 1960s as an African American woman? Not easy, right? Life was not easy in the south for these women,but this story is a beautiful story to give us some insight into what life was like. This book is told from the perspective oftwo, sincere wise and fun loving black women whose job it is to take care of the houseand the children for wealthy white families in the south and it's also told from the perspectiveof Eugenia who is the daughter of one of the wealthy white families. She has an idea to create and write a bookabout the white and black race relations in the south in the 1960s. So it's kind of a book within a book. She's writing a book in the book. Personally, I really loved this story andI felt like I learned a lot about history in the US and especially because I live inthe south, I felt like it helped me to learn more about where I live. I'm going to read a couple sentences fromthis book, but I want to let you know I almost included this book in my other video a whileago about recommendations for English books in general, but I decided not to include itbecause the author decides to use some changes in grammar and changes in spelling to showthe dialect of the people who were living in the south. So I want you to just be aware that some ofthe grammar is not textbook correct grammar, but it's accurate for the people who livedat that time. So you're going to hear their voice, heartheir dialect while you're reading. Let me read a couple sentences and then I'lltell you about what I mean. Chapter one, Abilene. This whose perspective we're seeing. August 1962, Mae Mobley was born on an earlySunday morning in August 1960, a church baby. We like to call it. Taking care of white babies, that's what Ido, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised 17 kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stopcrying, and go to the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out of bed in the morning,but I ain't never seen a baby yell like May Mobley Leefolt. First day I walk in the door, there she be,red hot and hollering with colic, fighting that bottle like it's a rotten turnip. Mrs. Leefolt. She looked terrified at her own child. What am I doing wrong? Why can't I stop it? It? That was my first hint. Something is wrong with this situation. So here we see the perspective of Abilene. One of the people who cares for the whitechildren and the white households in the south, but she uses some interesting dialect changesin her stories so far. For example, she says, I done raised 17 kids. The correct version is I raised, but she addsdone, so once you realize, okay, when I see done, this is just a regional dialect variation. It's not the most common way of speaking. Once you realize that, it's not too bad, it'seasier to understand. Or for example, she uses the word ain't, Iain't never seen. I don't really recommend using the word ain't. This is something that is also kind of a regionalor even class difference in English, but because she uses this word in the book, you kind ofcan get this picture of where she's coming from, the kind of person that she is, andit's a good way to learn more about the culture. The next book is another classic Americanstory. It is Into the Wild by John Krakauer. I'm going to read the front of this book becauseit gives a beautiful description. In April 1992, this is a true story, a youngman from a well to do family, that means a wealthy family, hitchhiked to Alaska and walkedalone into the wilderness north of Mount McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity,abandoned his car, and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet and inventeda new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body wasfound by a moose hunter. Oh. This gives a gripping summary of what happensin this story. The reason why I wanted to include this adventurestory, first of all, it's a true story, so it makes it even more incredible, but alsowe can see that the main character, Christopher McCandless, he is leaving his life, his wellto do, his comfortable life and he is going off into the wilderness, into the forest,going out into an unknown territory. But why is he doing that? Is he doing it for survival? Because he needs to. Because in the previous book, Little Houseon the Prairie, they did that because they needed to survive, but he is not doing thatbecause he needs to survive. Instead, he's doing something that's quitetypical in American culture and that is trying to find yourself, and this is quite a vagueidea. It's not specific at all, but it is tryingto find your roots, or who you are, what you love, and who you truly are. So Christopher goes off into the wildernesstrying to find himself, so if you enjoy some philosophical thinking, some ideas about enlighteningyourself, about what is society, how can I fit in? This book is a great one for you and it'salso an adventure story. Let's read a couple sentences from this book. This book is full of different maps and alsoreal writings from Christopher because he sent postcards and letters back to his friendsand family, so this gives us quite a real feel. Alright, let's read some of the first sentences. Chapter one. The Alaska Interior. Jim Galleon had driven four miles out of Fairbankswhen he spotted a hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road. Thumb raised high, shivering in the Alaskadawn. He didn't appear to be very old. 18, maybe 19 at most. A rifle protruded from the young man's backpack,but he looked friendly enough. A hitchhiker with a gun isn't the sort ofthing that gives motorists pause in the 49th state. Galleon steered his truck onto the shoulderand told the kid to climb in. So here we've already been introduced to alot of great vocabulary. You have seen the expression, give pause. Oh, how can we use this as a verb? It gives me pause. This means it makes me stop and think, andin the book he says, when you see someone carrying a gun, it doesn't make you stop andthink, it's quite normal in the 49th state. This is Alaska, so in Alaska it's quite commonto carry a gun, at least in this time period. So it's kind of giving this general pictureof the wilderness, this wild different land in Alaska that the main character, Christopherhas gone to. Let's go on to the fifth book. It is Bill Bryson's book. I'm a Stranger Here Myself. I love everything about this book. This is one of my top 10 books of all time,but in fact it's not really even a book. It's a series of articles and essays thatthe author Bill Bryson wrote. This is a nonfiction book as well, that hewrote about his experience as an American moving back to the US, so he has lived inthe UK for 20 years and this is his notes on returning to America after 20 years away,so he's kind of experiencing the American culture for a second time. He grew up in the US, but as an adult he livedin the UK for such a long time that that became normal to him and now he's moving back tothe U.S. and Bill Bryson's style of writing is comedic and clever and witty and beautifulin every way. Let's read a couple sentences from one ofhis chapters called take me out to the ballpark. A great thing about this book is that youcan complete a full story in just a few pages, so in three pages you can finish this fullstory and feel like you've accomplished something in English. Let's read a couple sentences. People sometimes ask me what's the differencebetween baseball and cricket? The answer is simple. Both are games of great skill involving ballsand bats, but with this crucial difference, baseball is exciting and when you go homeat the end of the day, you know who won. I'm joking. Of course. Cricket is a wonderful sport, full of deliciouslyscattered micro moments of real action. If a doctor ever instructs me to take a completerest and not get overexcited, I shall become a fan at once. In the meantime, my heart belongs to baseball. It's what I grew up with, what I played asa boy, and that of course is vital to any meaningful appreciation of a sport. I had this brought home to me many years agoin England when I went out to a soccer ground with a couple of English friends to knocka ball around. Okay. We have the introduction to his little storyabout his experience with baseball and we saw some interesting words here. He said, this brought home to me. I had this brought home to me. Do you know what this means to have somethingbrought home to you? Is someone really bringing physically bringingsomething to your house? No. This just means that you understood something,they're bringing it home to your mind, so he says, I had this idea brought home to memany years ago in England, so he got this idea in his mind many years ago. This is a great way to introduce yourselfto new vocabulary and idioms. I'd like to talk about one more book. It's kind of book recommendation 5.5 becauseit's from the same author, but it's a little bit nerdier. My final book recommendation is The MotherTongue by the same author, Bill Bryson. This book is my second favorite Bill Brysonbook, and if you like language and the history of language and those nerdy facts about language,especially English, you're gonna love this book. I think that this book is the most complexbook of all of my recommendations today because it uses some clever jokes and twists of languagewhile explaining history and it uses a lot of vocabulary to talk about vocabulary andwhere it came from, but it's quite interesting because it compares English with a lot ofother languages and showing where different English words came from. Let's read a couple sentences from the beginning,chapter one, the world's language. More than 3 million people in the world speakEnglish and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to. It would be charitable to say that the resultsare sometimes mixed. Imagine being a foreigner and having to learnthat in English, one tells a lie, but the truth. That a person who says, I could care lessmeans the same thing as someone who says, I couldn't care less. That a sign in the store says all items noton sale, doesn't mean literally what it says, that every item is not on sale, but ratherthan only some of the items are on sale, and when a person says to you, how do you do,he will be taken aback if you reply with impeccable logic, how do I do what? The complexities of the English language are,such that even native English speakers can not always communicate effectively as almostevery American learns on his first day in Britain. Indeed Robert Birchfield, editor of the OxfordEnglish dictionary created a stir in linguistic circles on both sides of the Atlantic. When he announced his belief that AmericanEnglish and English English are drifting apart so rapidly that within 200 years the two nationswon't be able to understand each other at all. So here he's just giving a glimpse of somehistory, some cleverness, some little ideas. There is a lot of information stored in thisbook. So if you're interested in the history ofthe English language and also some humor, this is not just facts. There's a lot of humor and wit, I recommendit. So today I recommended books from the pastabout American history, about the American language, about the south, about the 1960s,about the northwest in the 1990s, about the American spirits. I hope that you can learn more about the Englishlanguage, but also just American culture and the complexities and learn more about thisto help us all realize that in the end humans are humans, no matter where we come from,we might have different backgrounds and different ideas. But you know what? We're still human. So now I want to know about you. What books do you recommend? Let us know in the comments and I hope thatwe can read some books and expand our knowledge together. Thanks so much. I'll see you the next time for a new lessonon my YouTube channel here next Friday. Bye. The next step is to download my free e-book,Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English Speaker. You'll learn what you need to do to speakconfidently and fluently.. Thanks so much. Bye.